»Podcast | AdExchanger Talks

Listen in as AdExchanger, the leading voice in ad tech, explores the evolution of data-driven digital media and marketing in a series of podcast interviews with advertising and marketing technology newsmakers that we call AdExchanger Talks.

AdExchanger Talks Episodes feature thoughtful interviews with key figures in advertising and people who are transforming data-driven digital advertising - and marketing as a whole.

New and previously published episodes will be available on this page. Additionally, listeners can easily subscribe via the channels below.

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AdExchanger Talks is available via most podcast apps and popular channels including these listed below. If you've looked elsewhere for the podcast and cannot find it, please let us know.

Frost Prioleau is a longtime digital ad entrepreneur, having founded and sold two companies over the span of 13 years. The first was Personifi, a behavioral ad targeter acquired by Collective Media in 2008, followed by Simpli.fi, a programmatic platform for local advertisers. This week on the podcast, Prioleau describes his experience trying to crack the market for localized programmatic advertising.

In this episode, Pivotal Research senior analyst Brian Wieser talks about the analyst life and his views on an assortment of companies. He drills down on Facebook, where his analysis often deviates from that of his peers.

Sean Muller had very little knowledge of television when he launched iSpot.tv six years ago. iSpot.tv’s first product was a competitive intelligence product, a data asset it licensed for $1,500 a month. Today, it offers an analytics suite that can link TV ad data to specific marketer outcomes, such as a website visit or purchase or to the marketing stack.

Kavata Mbondo presided over Time Inc.’s ad business during a period of dramatic upheaval for traditional media companies. When she started there, the iPhone didn’t exist, Facebook was a young scrapper and programmatic wasn’t quite a thing Mbondo recently left Time Inc. for a new venture: helping Getty Images launch a consumer-facing media business called FOTO. In this episode, she reflects on her years in digital media and describes the new publishing venture.

On the podcast this week, New York Interactive Ad Exchange (NYIAX) founder and President Carolina Abenante talks about her career as a deal-maker and her current project: making blockchain work for the marketer.

In this week's podcast, Gartner Research VP Martin Kihn picks apart the assumptions underlying the latest Facebook backlash: namely, that the data scraped by Cambridge Analytica had a material impact on the election outcome.

In this episode, Fain talks about how deep learning can automate algorithm building. He discusses how Cognitiv’s focus on big data and deep learning – and departure from more common artificial intelligence disciplines like natural language processing and computer vision – let it carve out a niche.

4C Insights might be the largest of the small handful of companies certified to buy media across all the social platforms. All the big agency groups, along with many independents, use its technology. On the AdExchanger Talks podcast this week, CEO Lance Neuhauser attributes the company's rapid growth to its data science capabilities.

Our guest this week is Kerry Bianchi, president and CEO of Visto, formerly Collective. Bianchi has overseen a major transition of the company since taking the helm from founder Joe Apprendi one year ago.

With its creative formats now embedded in most ad-supported broadcast and cable TV apps on Roku and other operating systems, BrightLine may have a new data opportunity. On the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks, CEO Jacqueline Corbelli discusses business results, the product road map and female leadership in tech.

This week on the podcast, SVP and platform GM Scott Rosenberg tells the Roku story and describes in detail the ad model that has helped propel the company to a post-IPO valuation of more than $4 billion.

Our guest on the podcast this week, Tune CEO Peter Hamilton, positioned his company early on in the mobile attribution niche. Now he's looking ahead to a future when app-tracking tools are merged into large marketing technology platforms.

Our guest this week is Belinda Smith, a senior brand marketer at Electronic Arts who is a font of insights for any marketer thinking about bringing their media buying activities in-house. Also in this episode: The problem with incrementality tests, the return of context and the future of creativity.

In this two-guest episode of AdExchanger Talks, Bannister and Rachel Parkin, SVP of strategy and sales, describe Cafe's unique business, which combines owned-and-operated properties with a media rep business called AdThrive.

In the wake of several big acquisitions, Salesforce Marketing Cloud has surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue. In this week's episode we talk with its chief strategy officer, Jon Suarez-Davis, who joined the company through its 2016 acquisition of Krux.

Michael Bologna has been a key player in the unfolding story of advanced television since the beginning. In this episode, Bologna and AdExchanger executive editor, Zach Rodgers, discuss Bologna's journey from "emerging media" exec at GroupM to his newest startup venture, one2one Media.

Parents, media companies and brands are struggling to adapt to a sea change in how kids consume content. Children have migrated away from traditional entertainment channels like Nick Jr. in droves, embracing new platforms – mostly YouTube and mobile games. In this episode of AdExchanger Talks, we hear from SuperAwesome CEO Dylan Collins, who has been focused on kids’ media for the long haul.

The world's largest independent media agency didn't have a dedicated programmatic capability until 2013. Historically a big TV buyer, Horizon Media decided to build its own "desk" in a way that would distinguish it from holding companies: by focusing on transparent pricing of media and data.

In the mid-’90s, Marita Scarfi was working as an accountant but wanted in on nascent the internet economy. After a period of networking, she landed at digital agency Organic, where over the course of 17 years she rose from controller to CEO. After a stop at creative agency 72andSunny, she made the jump to marketing tech, joining PebblePost as CFO earlier this year.

Chip Schenck, Meredith's VP of data and programmatic, wants to take care of his advertisers – specifically the brands that have been with the publisher of Allrecipes, Shape and Better Homes and Gardens for the long haul. Among Meredith's top clients over the last 100 years, he says in the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks, "97 of them are still going to be our clients [over the next 100]."

The basic structure of agencies hasn't changed much in 20 years, but the competition has exploded, according to Rapp Worldwide CEO Marco Scognamiglio. "Your Wundermans, your Ogilvys, your RAPPs are still big, successful businesses. We've done very few acquisitions. We've grown organically," Marco Scognamiglio says in the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks.

As big brands seeking younger audiences move TV budgets online, some have been put off by digital's triple threat: brand safety, viewability and fraud. Hulu is there for them. Hulu basically offers the benefits of TV in a digital buy, according to Doug Fleming, Hula’s head of advanced TV. Seventy-seven percent of Hulu viewing happens on a TV device, offering advertisers the creative impact of television with the data advantages of digital.Episode 48: SpotX Builds The Modern Ad Server

CEO Mike Shehan is focused on building out SpotX's capabilities in linear and connected TV. That initiative requires a substantial investment in engineering and sales for a company that started life as a video ad exchange – its original name was SpotXchange – but has evolved into a complete monetization platform.

Clocking at 44 minutes, the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks with Criteo CEO Eric Eichmann is our longest yet. Pardon our loquaciousness, but there was just so much to talk about.Episode 44: Auren Hoffman Tells The Truth

This week on AdExchanger Talks, MoPub honcho Janae Redmond holds forth on changes in the mobile app ecosystem – and how the Twitter-owned exchange has responded to them.
Episode 42: Resolving LiveRamp's Identity

After graduating Stanford in 2010 with a degree in math and computational sciences, Anneka Gupta took her first software engineering job with a company called Rapleaf. That was seven years ago, and she's still there – though the company and its positioning have changed utterly.

Till Faida, CEO of Eyeo discusses how the company has pressed ahead with its strategy to give users more control over their ad environment with tools like the Adblock Plus browser extension from its headline grabbing days in 2015 and 2016, when ad blocking rates in the US and Europe surpassed 20% of desktop users to today.

"B2B always kind of follows B2C, whether it's the use of video, social media or commerce," Dun & Bradstreet CEO Bob Carrigan says in the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks. "And programmatic is moving aggressively now into the B2B space."

For this week's episode of AdExchanger Talks, we have The Weather Co. in the studio. The IBM subsidiary is a huge seller of mobile app inventory, and has recently opened a new chapter by licensing its data asset separately from media.

The emergence of header bidding three years ago came close on the heels of Index Exchange's pivot from traditional media sales into programmatic publisher enablement. In this week's episode of AdExchanger Talks, CEO Andrew Casale describes the reinvention header bidding enabled for his 16-year-old family-operated business.

Google and Facebook have no problem compelling advertisers to create ads that visually conform to their huge platforms. Smaller publishers? Not so much. This week's podcast guest, TripleLift CEO Eric Berry, built his company five years ago based on that basic reality. Five years later, the programmatic native company is on track to exceed $100 million in annual revenue.

BMO Capital Markets equity research analyst Dan Salmon on why the Total Addressable Market continues to grow in spite of cost pressure from big CPGs, the Amazon freight train and what the future may hold for the digital duopoly.

Business Insider's Jana Meron explains why she is a big proponent of Ads.txt. She also touches on header bidding, the durability of open exchanges and how BI used programmatic to launch an entirely new media brand – the social-first Insider.

In the discussion, Kieley Taylor evaluates the relative strength and maturity of API programs offered by social media platforms, each of which has a different ad infrastructure and a different set of rules.

In this 30-minute conversation, Les Hollander surveys Spotify's tapestry of ad offerings and its opportunity within the broader radio market. US advertisers spent about $1 billion on digital audio in 2016 and $15 billion on terrestrial radio. "It's a big marketplace," he says. "It's ripe for disruption."

Among early programmatic ad platforms, 10-year-old AdRoll is unique in the breadth of its customer base. With 35,000 mostly small-to-mid-sized companies in its roster, it claims to be the most widely adopted standalone performance-marketing platform.

Barrett talks in-depth about his client listening tour and his roadmap for the company. Rubicon Project was tripped up last year by the header bidding trend and client pushback on fees, but he says the rapid pace of change leaves room to innovate.

This year NBCUniversal is substantially altering its go-to-market for the upfronts. In the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks, NBCU's SVP of advanced advertising products, Denise Colella, details the changes.

As global CRO at Bloomberg Media, Keith Grossman oversees a "business within a business" that reaches 62 million users and brings in nine figures of revenue annually. Grossman talks about his sales strategy for that business-focused audience, and where programmatic fits in.

When the news dropped that Oracle would acquire Moat, DataXu CEO Mike Baker's first thought was not that Oracle had made a big move in measurement, but that it had bought a piece of the walled garden action.

Six months ago Dentsu officially closed on its $1.5 billion acquisition of CRM and digital media agency Merkle. In this episode, chief data and product officer John Lee discusses the integration of Merkle's data assets with the holding company.

Essence, digital agency to Google, was acquired by GroupM in 2015. In this episode, Chief Product Officer Andrew Shebbeare talks about the company's service model and Google's sudden brand safety crisis.

Sebastian Tomich, SVP of advertising and innovation for The New York Times, talks about the revenue mix at America's paper of record. He says that even as it doubles down on high-end brand partnerships, the Times is looking to offload day-to-day tactical media sales. "All of the sponsorships are becoming much more high end and much more involved on our side. What's going away is that tactical middle where you had media agencies sending us RFPs." Also in this episode: Do brands really care about fake news? Is the Times home page undervalued? And does the company care about data leakage?

The Beeswax founder provides a company update and talks about a range of digital ad trends with his signature dry humor. It's all here – Snapchat, Google, Facebook, AppNexus, header bidding, consolidation and the long VC drought – and you'll want to hear the whole thing.

In a recent report, Forrester Research said quality concerns could lead marketers to scale back on programmatic in the short term and accept higher prices for verified inventory. "We're not saying pull out of programmatic. That's absurd," Melissa Parrish, Forrester VP and Research Director, explains in the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks. "We're saying, take advantage of the controls you have."

Omnicom Group led all of its peers in the total value of its creative and media business wins last year. In this episode, its digital chief Jonathan Nelson talks about the data and technology strategy that contributed to those wins and recent changes in the marketing technology ecosystem. .

In the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks, mParticle CEO Michael Katz talks about the vision behind mParticle, his three-year-old startup that consolidates data feeds in the fragmented app ecosystem. (He describes it as an "API of APIs.") Katz sold his previous startup Interclick to Yahoo in 2011, and in this episode he also describes how he's doing things differently the second time around.

The number of independent cross-device players continues to shrink amid a wave of consolidation. Last year Telenor snapped up Tapad, and Adelphic went to Time Inc. just this week. Drawbridge, led by CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, is the lone wolf in that space.

Four months after its IPO, The Trade Desk is valued at $1.1 billion. The company is now using the $90 million raised by the offering to grow in areas like mobile, TV/video, private deals and global expansion. In this interview, Green holds forth on the company's strategic focus on buy-side customers - particularly agencies - and the future of programmatic business models, among other topics.

Header bidding has been great for publishers and, as a rule, tough on sell-side platforms. In this discussion, PubMatic President Kirk McDonald talks about evolution of the programmatic selling model and where his company is making bets. "Header bidding has moved control of ad serving back to the publisher," McDonald says in this episode of AdExchanger Talks. "The evolution is putting publishers back in a place where they're controlling the tension around access to their impressions."

According to Nate Woodman,GM of demand solutions at IPONWEB, a small club of marketers is working on proprietary machine-learning models. Doing so won't be easy. "The challenge to the industry, and it's a daunting one, is to find a way to spread proprietary algorithms across programmatic platforms," he says in this episode. "Most brands aren't even close to realizing this vision, but some are making overtures."

Integral Ad Science has evolved from a brand safety purveyor to a holistic arbiter of ad quality. What's next? In this episode, Knoll talks about the IAS product roadmap, and suggests the ability to track duration of ad exposure across media placements represents a new direction. He also discusses the company's financials and the possibility of a 2017 IPO.

Omnicom Group's analytics arm, Annalect, helped it capture a bunch of new business in 2016. And not only media agency accounts. "We've optimized the heck out of the media side of things for so long. Let's go back and do that for the creatives," North America CEO Erin Matts says in this episode. "That piece of it where data and analytics is reuniting media and creative … has been something clients really respond to." Also in this episode: Annalect's skunkworks culture, technology approach and obsession with cross-device identity in the age of walled gardens.

JoeZawadzki is a founder of multiple ad tech companies and a frequent angel investor. In thisAdExchanger Talks podcast he discusses the forces changing programmatic buying, including the rise of header bidding and new access to retail data. He also describes the shifting roadmap at MediaMath and what he needs to bring as a leader and manager.

Brian Adams was the CTO of AdMeld, an early stage sell-side platform acquired by Google in 2011. Then, after four years spent running aspects of Google's publisher business, he launched a consumer-facing startup with MightyTV, an app that uses data and machine learning to help people decide what TV and movies to watch. In this AdExchanger Talks podcast, he talks about life after Google and how machine learning will factor into user media consumption.

In this AdExchanger Talks podcast, Lynda Clarizio, President of US Media at Nielsen, talks in depth about Nielsen's evolving research approach, which combines the company's classic panel-based approach with new digital and "census" methodologies. She also addresses critics of Nielsen and how networks have responded to Nielsen reports of linear TV declines. (They sometimes blame the ref.) And the discussion ends with a discussion of women in the media and ad tech sectors.

Brian Lesser was promoted to run GroupM in North America last year after building its Xaxis trading desk into a billion dollar business. "My job is to transform GroupM to be much more about gathering data about consumers, because that's where our leverage is going to come from in the future." In this inaugural AdExchanger Talks podcast episode, Lesser discusses the evolving transparency debate, GroupM's ad tech investments and changes to the holding company model.